Just saw this link at The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould archive. Eldredge was Gould's collaborator on punctuated equilibrium theory, and is a deep thinker about matters evolutionary. It contains discussions of many topics - go check it out.
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The Friend of Darwin Award, also known as the Chucky, honors NCSE members for outstanding effort to support NCSE and its goals. Here's what it looks like.
And this year's award goes to ....
Niles Eldredge!!! Congratulations Niles.
From the NCSE:
Niles Eldredge has been making the case for…
The Virginia Quarterly Review has published an essay by Niles Eldredge on its website, entitled "Confessions of Darwinist". I have no problem with Eldredge referring to himself as a Darwinist, as he is not misusing the term. Eldredge's essay explains how punctuated equilibrium (the theory that…
Shortly after my wife and I were married in the summer of 2006, but before our apartment was lined with overstocked bookshelves, we used to make at least one weekly stop at the local public library. While she browsed a wide array of sections, I invariably scaled the back staircase to the science…
Everyone's blogging about Stephen J. Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Razib, John Lynch, Laelaps). I'm not. The book's too long, and I'm too busy. But that doesn't mean I can't link to them, and to another review of Gould. The other is Richard Lewontin's review of two Gould books: The…
Calling Eldredge "Gould's collaborator on punctuated equilibrium [sic]" does a disservice to Eldredge. Eldredge came up with the idea, published it on his own, and then published a second paper (this time with Gould) which introduced the term "punctuated equilibria". Gould's contribution was the clever moniker. But you already knew that.
Anyway, it looks more like a forum than a blog. A blog (with an RSS feed) would be better. Somebody needs to get Eldredge a new tech guru.
Yeah, someone should tell him to get a real blogging software. I like Eldredge's straightforward style as a contrast to Gould's more flowery prose. His book Reinventing Darwin made me rethink about Dawkins and the whole "adaptationist programme."
Calling Eldredge a collaborator is not a disservice RPM. The word only means they worked together, and suggest partnership. Although it is true that Eldredge first developed the idea, it would have gone unnoticed without Gould's literary panache, and his eccentric personality. Ideas, I think, evolve much differently than organisms. In this world, origination is not as important as development and dispersal. Just ask William Charles Wells.
I meant by "collaborator" that they collaborated. No indication of seniority or importance attaches to that. Likewise one might call Gould Eldredge's collaborator.
And Macroevolutionary Dynamics is one of the books that shattered my complacency and dogmatic slumbers. I'm more affected by Eldredge than by Gould.